Running the gauntlet

The past few weeks have been difficult, not just because of Dad's illness and death but because of my family. Once again, I am not looking for sympathy but a place to voice my thoughts and feelings.

When my father's obituary was published, my name wasn't on it as one of his children. Beanie called me and told me about it and said I was part of the family, but the evidence is clear. Friends and relatives called and emailed asking why I wasn't included. I cannot tell them why. I do know how obituaries work in the newspaper business. You call and give the information, answering questions, and they use their basic format to write it out and publish. The newspaper can only publish what it is given. My family didn't give them my name. I wasn't included and anything after the fact, like Beanie's call and apology to me, don't change the basic facts. I wasn't included.

There was a guest book for my father and one of my sons wrote in it that my parents, his grandparents, saved him and his brothers when I abandoned them, when I left them alone. It was a lie and one I didn't know had been told. I never left my children alone. They were taken crying and screaming from my arms but my mother has spent the last 25+ years telling the lie that I abandoned them and that is what my children believe. She had help. My ex-husband and his wife had good reason to perpetuate the story. After all, my ex-husband married the woman with whom he was having an affair when we were married. At least this is America and he couldn't marry all the women he had affairs with while we were married. He married the one who was the most tenacious and demanding. They're still married. She's not likely to let go of him now that she has him and I was glad to let him go. There is only so much pain and degradation a person can take and I had had my fill.

I called my mother the day of my father's funeral, after I read what my son wrote, and asked her why she lied about me and about what really happened. She responded by hanging up. It took me a few days to decide what to do and Wednesday, two days after my father's funeral, I wrote her. I wanted a record of what I said, one that she couldn't misquote or lie about, proof of what I wanted. I told her that until she tells the truth and gives me back my name and my honor, I do not want to see or hear from her. I will not answer her phone calls or her letters. She cannot buy me with money or things, only with the truth.

My father knew the truth but he had to live with her, he said, and she would have made his life a worse living hell so he kept silent. Dad said she was crazy and that when she decided to do something she was unstoppable. He was right. She is crazy and she's a liar, but he should have told the truth no matter the cost. He didn't and now he's gone.

Some of my friends and family who knew what really happened have contacted me because of what my son wrote and because I was not included in Dad's obituary. They told me they always knew how my mother treated me and there was nothing they could do. They told me stories of what my mother had done to me, things I have faced my mother with, things my mother claimed were delusions and the reason I should be locked up. It all brings to mind a conversation my mother and I had years ago. She told me she has never liked me but she raised me out of duty, that she hated me. Dad was shocked, his jaw nearly hitting the floor. My response was probably a little bit crazy. I laughed. I finally had proof of what I had always suspected, that she hated me. I knew the truth because of how she had always treated me, even to the point that strangers would ask me why. I always gave them the same answer: "You'll have to ask her."

The problem is that whether or not my mother tells the truth, it won't restore my name or my honor. There is no system of justice or field of battle where I can be vindicated. The lies my mother has told over the years have cost me nearly everything and have permanently branded me. My youngest son now questions what he has believed most of his life. He has a choice. He can believe what he has always believed--that I abandoned him and his brothers and they were rescued by my parents--or he can believe the truth. If he believes the truth, his whole life is a lie, everything he knows is a lie, and he has to live with the knowledge that people he trusted deliberately hurt him and me. Or he can believe the lie and keep blaming and hating me, one person, someone who he barely knows. I already know what he will do. He will choose the lie because to do otherwise will turn his world inside out. I understand and I can forgive him. I can even forgive my mother for what she has done because a scorpion after all is always going to be a scorpion. However, I don't have to welcome the scorpion onto my back or into my home--and I never will again.

No, I will never get back my name or my honor and now I have cast down the gauntlet and no longer have a family once the letter reaches my mother and she tells the rest of the family. It isn't as though I haven't always been alone, but I always held onto the hope that one day my family would recognize the truth and make things right. Now I know that isn't going to happen.

We cannot choose the family into which we are born. I certainly didn't. I was a newborn baby who was passed from one mother to another. One thing I do have is a family of friends who know me and care about me. I have had proof of that during all of this. It's nice to know there are some people who see me as I am and never believed the lies because they saw and heard the truth. It has to be enough.

Home again

Yesterday at 11 a.m. I topped a rise as I turned down the road that takes me home. Below in the distance Pikes Peak's snowy head was caught in the clouds and I knew I was home. At that same moment, back in Ohio, my dad, Jim Cornwell, slipped the bonds holding him to this earth and to his body. He had seen me safely home again after a long and difficult journey.

I didn't get home until noon. I called Beanie to let her know I had finally arrived safely home. She told me Dad died an hour before. She didn't get there in time to be with him when he died. She had been at work. Dad had been home from the hospital less than a week but at least he died with most of his family around him and he didn't have to linger through bed sores and morphine-laced consciousness.

As I called some of my friends and my father's friends, with whom I still keep in contact, many of them shared their memories of Dad. They were all similar to the ones I carefully fingered in my mind. In all the pictures and movie film we have of Dad, he is either smiling or laughing. Carmen Kennon, whose family lived above ours when we were stationed together in Panama, said that most of all she remembers Dad's laugh. "It was a soul deep kind of laugh," she said. "Whenever any of us were feeling bad or things weren't working out real good," she said, "Jim made us laugh. He was so friendly and open and likable. You're just like him," she said.

Dad never knew a stranger. People came up to him and talked and he talked to everyone he met, making them smile and laugh even through their tears, even when they were having a bad day. In movie films of Dad marching in formation he had a discreet smile on his face and his blue eyes twinkled with laughter. He didn't know how to fake smile. He smiled with his whole heart and his body. He had a wicked (some would say sick) sense of humor and he saw joy everywhere. He could pick a leaf from a tree or a flower and stick it into the ground and it would blossom into abundant and glorious growth. He talked to his plants and he was convinced they talked to him. Anyone who has seen his gardens and the plants in his house can tell he had magic in his touch. Dad was quiet in his own way and he didn't read much but you always knew when he was home. Everything seemed and felt more alive.

He had a passion for animals and he loved chickens, the chickens he gave away to one of my brother's friends last Sunday because he knew he'd never be able to feed them or nurse their eggs to hatching. Animals responded to him the way plants did, with love, giving him their best. Dad had so much love and respect for nature and he shared a special affinity with the natural world. Now he's a part of nature once more and safely home again.

James Cary Cornwell
Born: September 2, 1927
Died: March 1, 2007

The times of my life

The past couple of weeks have been difficult at best, not the least because my father is dying. This is not a good time to have a birthday and mine came and went with little or no comment. I don't mind because most of my birthdays have come and gone without much comment from most of my family; that is nothing new.

I have been away from Ohio most of the past eight years and the only time I saw my father in a hospital bed was when his heart valve was replaced eight years ago, but it's the only time I remember seeing him in the hospital. Mom is a different story for a different time. She has been in and out of the hospital most of my life but she still keeps perking along, diminished in body but not in whatever essence keeps her alive. Dad looked better when he had his heart valve replaced, but then he still had enough essence and fight to keep going--and he did. Such is not the case now.

Dad was in the hospital for exactly one week during which I asked lots of questions of nurses and doctors (after my father assured them he wanted them to tell me what I wanted to know) and the news kept getting worse and worse. Heart failure, kidney failure, fluid in his lungs, pneumonia, cancer spread to his lungs and organ-system failure down the line. Dad could barely swallow water without too much pain at first and that got worse. He wanted to go home. The doctors couldn't do any more for him so they sent him home to die. It's just a matter of time now and not much time at that.

I am not writing this now to garner sympathy but as a true record of what is happening, something that will last when my father is gone. I don't need anyone's sympathy because my father has lived a good life and I have done my crying over his death. I have seen enough of people demanding attention for their grief and their needs when all attention should be focused on Dad at this of all times. His last days on earth should not be colored or defined by anyone else's histrionics and selfish upstaging because it's not about them. They aren't dying. They aren't faced with their own mortality and staring into the void. Such melodramatic displays are self serving and selfish.

My father has led a good and interesting life and when he is gone the world will be a little less bright and cheerful.

Dad was born in a cornfield, delivered by his own father who cut the umbilical cord with a corn scythe. He lived most of his young life in a real log cabin, sharing the loft with eight other children briefly and then seven siblings when Doral died a few weeks after he was born, following his mother who died at the age of 31 worn out from work and bearing children. Dad said he was a real backwoods hick who was backward and didn't even have shoes to wear when he began attending school. His father and some friends made and sold moonshine until the revenuers caught up with his father and sent him to prison for two years. Grandpa could have had company but he refused to give up his friends. The eight children fended for themselves since social services wasn't around then. Stories about Dad's sister Evelyn scalding her arm with hot grease when she made donuts and another one of Dad's sisters jumping from the second floor window to the ground and breaking a leg were the stuff of family legend. There were the strange jobs Dad had, washing elephants in a circus (they smelled really bad) when he and his brother Don ran away to the circus (that didn't last long) and getting booze for the johns who visited the prostitutes in the hotel where Dad worked as a page at the ripe old age of 12 added to the legends of a more adventurous time.

My father has always been a quiet man when it came to his own emotions whose clear blue eyes fill with joy and mirth when he laughs, and he laughs a lot. He is friendly and talkative whether he knows you or not and always holds out the open hand of friendship. He is intelligent and curious and an endless source of amazement. He cooks and sews and he knows how to curl and braid little girls' hair. He is endlessly patient and a genuinely good man who constantly sees the funny side of life. He is doggedly loyal and he knows how to make purses out of banana leaves. He is the glue that holds our family together when others would have torn us apart long ago. He is simply the best man I have ever known and the ruler by which I measure every man I meet. He is a hard act to follow.

Parallel worlds

Einstein was one of the greatest scientific minds of our age but he had a personal life, a very rich one, by all accounts. He was head over heels in love with his wife and he never really got over her. I wonder if he sussed out the probability of parallel worlds created by a single different choice, a fork in the road or something done or undone so he could live with the loss of his beloved wife by imagine them living happily together in another time line. For some people, religion provides a happily ever after with heaven or paradise, an end to suffering, a place where no one grows old and there is no pain. The Greeks called it the Elysian Fields. Einstein called it a parallel world. Fairy tales ended with happily ever after, leaving the reader to imagine a place where time stood still and the bliss and oneness of the first blush of love continued on forever.

We all cling to some form of happily ever after, inventing parallel worlds, paradise, heaven or Elysian Fields where it's always benevolent, always warm and sunny, where the rain falls like a soft and soothing balm, and those we love are ever with us. Atheists prefer to find happiness here and now in every single breath of every single day...or in the mathematical perfection of parallel worlds where the mistakes we make can be undone.

That is all. Disperse.

Facades

I just finished another review book and it is a doozy. The Liar's Diary has some flaws, most notably in knowing the difference between affect and effect, among others, but the story is riveting and disturbing, much like watching a train wreck at half speed. It brings up the memory of other families who keep secrets behind a perfectly normal and upstanding facade. Few on the outside ever glimpse the dark and bitter truth and those on the inside have a vested interest in ignoring the truth just to get by.

I have seen many marriages from the outside, and quite a few from the inside, but those that most directly affected me were my in-laws and a couple who employed me. In those three marriages I saw the good, the bad, and the undeniably ugly up close and personal.

My first husband's family was an ugly sewer that I was forced to trudge through for seven years. There were times I had to live with my in-laws. I got a front row seat for the secrets and lies vomited up from their murky depths. The neighbors thought they were the perfect couple, parents to the perfect family, but that was far from the truth. My father-in-law was a long distance trucker and he had girlfriends in truck stops and cities all over the country. He and his best friend's wife were quite an item when his best friend was out on long hauls; he was a trucker, too. Ed made sure they weren't at home at the same time so he could take care of his friend's wife since his own wife sickened him to no end. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was terrorizing her children and running up credit card bills she hid from Ed until it got to the point they almost lost their home. Ed worked harder, pulled more dangerous and much more lucrative loads and paid off the debts only to have to turn around and do it again and again every time Betty got the urge to spend more money, which was all too frequent. She made sure she had whatever she and her girls wanted, all the time playing the dutiful and frugal housewife who served her family cheap and utterly tasteless meals. After all, it costs money to buy herbs and spices, money she could spend on fabric painting or another closet full of clothes and toys and gadgets she nor her girls used.

My second husband's family was quite different. I met him the year after his mother died. I was close to my father-in-law and one of my brothers-in-law who spent hours showing me family photos and telling me stories about the mother-in-law I never met. I can still see the tears shining in my father-in-law's face when he talked about how Ethel was always late, even literally to her own funeral, and how whenever they had a disagreement she solved it by putting pepper in his food that would burn his other end a few hours later. Larry, my brother-in-law, told me about how strange it was not to see his parents holding hands while they watched TV or how Bill would Hug Ethel when she was doing the dishes or cooking dinner, a dinner she inevitably burned and he ate as though it were ambrosia. After nearly 40 years of marriage, Bill and Ethel were still on their honeymoon and sometimes Larry said it felt like he and his brothers and sisters were intruding. Bill missed Ethel so much he died 13 months after she did even though he was living with another woman, a woman Ethel had picked out for him, hoping he would go on with his life and be happy.

David and Connie aren't relatives but I worked for Connie for years. Those years felt more like slavery or indentured servitude than a job, but David made it a little easier for me. He understood his wife. Although David never came out and said anything, I had a front row seat for Connie's diatribes, recriminations and ego assassinations on too many occasions to miss what was going on. Connie was manic-depressive (what is now called bipolar) and almost always in the manic phase, especially on those Fridays when we did the payroll for Batelle. It was a rush job and Connie ran around snatching half finished batches from desks where operators were inputting the data to throw it on someone else's desk to be verified before it was even finished and balanced. We all prayed for her to get sick and be out those days, but she never was.

Connie was a control freak with a vile and vicious tongue and her favorite targets were her adopted son, John, and David. She never thought to cut them up into little quivering pieces of emotional goo when no one was around and she frequently sliced and diced them in front of me. David smiled and made light of Connie's attacks but she continually battered John, often calling me into her office or at home to ask me why her son was such a useless, lazy bastard. Few people outside the inner circle knew about the emotional abuse Connie honed to a fine art. Everyone thought Connie and David were the bright picture of success. They owned two businesses and even bought a shopping center to house their business, moving their way up from a pair of trailers on the 150 acres of their farm outside Columbus. David was always smiling and Connie was always driven but they seemed like the happiest couple on the planet every summer during the office picnic and at the Xmas party every year.

After reading The Liar's Diary and being reminded so starkly of the facades I have seen up close over the years, I have no doubt that the happiest facades, or the most normal ones, hide more secrets, shame, abuse and pain that anyone realizes. I have known many over the years and it never ceases to amaze me every single time. Husbands and wives who don't talk to each other for days or weeks or months, except when they absolutely have to and only about bills and appointments and the necessities of running a household and raising children. Husbands and wives who are virtually strangers to one another and haven't a clue to whom they're married and can't remember why. They just keep going through the motions, going to church, serving on committees and showing only their public face while they slice and dice and emotionally dismember and numb themselves and each other. Makes me wonder if it's all worth it.

When I moved here, my landlady told me she'd never divorce her husband even though they had lived separate lives in different states for more than eleven years. She changed her mind last year and got her Xmas wish. She got divorced. She says now she was afraid to change things but now that it's over and done with she's glad she did it and wishes she had divorced her husband sooner. She realized at last that she has a right to be happy and as long as she was married to him that would never happen. It was partly about money and mostly about fear but she got through it. I know so many people in similar situations and my hope for them is that they finally get it before it's too late and their lives are over before they even get a chance to live them and know true happiness.

That is all. Disperse.

I'm in love

Mom called to tell me she was trying to find a movie, One Night With the King, a new film version of the story of Esther.

As a child, I loved to watch the Bible-based movies on Channel 10 on Sunday mornings. I loved the splendor and the color and the stories, like fairy tales. Esther was one of my favorites, as was Ruth. Women who had a place in history and changed history in some way always excited me, just like the story of the Queen Hatshepsut who was Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt who wore a false beard and ruled as king. Empress Theodora and Eleanor of Aquitaine and Queen Elizabeth of England and Catherine the Great of Russian were all women of power who ruled wisely and well, women who were strong and wise and left an indelible mark in a man's world. But in their hearts they were all women with a woman's desire for a mate who would cherish, love and respect them. Most of them found what they desired most, although not always in a royal bed.

As much as we cry against being led by our hearts and desire for a mate, one who cherishes and loves and respects us, we are also swayed by a pretty--or in my case, a handsome--face. One look at the current film screen Esther's king and I also fell for a handsome face, the face of Luke Goss. His voice, his manner, his strong body and his gorgeous blue eyes in that handsome face, what more could a woman desire?

As for the movie, it is more realistic and less Hollywood than the story of Queen Esther I saw on Sunday mornings as a child. Hollywood is evident in the opulent sets and the dramatic moments, but there is also humor and drama and love to be had in the movie. There is chemistry between Esther and King Xerxes and I doubt any woman would fail to fall in love with the king if he was anything like Luke Goss.

Gifts & Surprises

I have been catching up on all the free reviews I have backed up but the rest will have to be put aside because I got a big surprise today. A big box o' books from Author Link with nine new books, some of which are uncorrected proofs and not due to be published until June or July. I love surprises. I also got a box of books from Amazon, but I was expecting those. There is nothing better in the world than a box of books, except maybe mind blowing, earth moving, cascade failure sex, but that's another topic. Of course it also means I have to give up the books I took out of the library, but the good thing about that is I can always go get them again. The real surprise is two books from recent Bram Stoker winners and authors I have reviewed before who asked that I review their latest books.

Just when I feel like the world is imploding with me at the center, something wonderful happens. I get books. You'd think it was my birthday or something. And I know a certain east coast friend who is going to get a few more horror books to add to his reading list--if he can keep Steel quiet enough long enough to read. I may have to call and talk to the little sweetie again.

That is all. Disperse.

Betrayal

Ever find yourself busy and for no reason suddenly look up to an awe inspiring sight? I just did and I keep doing it all the time.

I was reading my email and finding yet one more thing I'm supposed to do as editor of the ham club newsletter. These things are listed in the bylaws, like being thrown off the board for missing two meetings in a row or publishing the club membership roster twice a year, which suddenly became (from another board member) periodically. The bylaws aren't listed on the web site and I have yet to see a copy despite being on the board and newsletter editor for a year. Sometimes all this secondhand news and information after the fact is like being betrayed over and over. I keep feeling like volunteering to help out wasn't such a good idea after all. Only one or two members helped me out at all and I'm still learning things I should have been told in the beginning. I used to wonder why no one wanted to step up to the plate and take over as editor when the past editor had begged for years to be relieved. I don't wonder any more. Betrayal seems to be a way of life with these people, and I don't just mean the feuds with other groups that still bring tears to certain members' eyes.

Betrayal is a theme lately, but not so much for me. I have suffered my betrayals over the years and thought I'd pretty much put them behind me until someone who wanted to get close to me told me I was as prickly as a porcupine. I thought I was funny, a little sardonic and still very open, but he didn't see it that way. And he wasn't alone. Some underlying sense of self preservation had kicked in to make me wary of strangers bearing gifts proclaiming they had only my best interests at heart. How could they know what my best interests were when they didn't even know me?

It looked like all the betrayals over the years by friends and lovers and even family had made me very cautious and unwilling to trust people who really did want to help and be friends. I could no longer tell the difference even though I maintained a pleasant demeanor while I kept my emotions behind a not so invisible wall. What I thought of as caution looked more like a barbed wire fence hooked up to a generator that would have fried a rhino had it gotten too close. I could no longer tell friend from foe and that fact became very apparent when a new friend--someone I finally let get inside the fence and wall--asked me why someone had been my friend in the first place. "Doesn't sound like they were much of a friend. Why were you friends?" he asked. I didn't have a good answer. I tend to be blind to the faults and outright nastiness from people I care about until it's too late and I am asking myself why I didn't see it all sooner.

One very dear friend has been wrestling with betrayal for a long time and is unable to allow himself to be happy. He knows what would make him happy but inside his wall and behind his silence where he wrestles with the demons of his past and his present he has become unable to know friend from foe. He struggles with honor and dreams of happiness, but he's afraid to reach out and take hold of it because betrayal is always close to him like an evil imp whispering in his ear and warning him off. I've heard that imp, as the comments about porcupine behavior will tell. I am no stranger to the dark whispers that kept me from reaching out to people who offered an open hand with no other reason than that they cared.

It took me a while to see friend from foe and I'm better for their patience and generosity because they have all made this porcupine a whole lot less isolated. I still have my prickly moments and I'm a little wary of people who seem too good to be true. It's like looking up and seeing something awe inspiring when I've been focused on mundane tasks and more bad news. Tonight I saw the sky over the deep purple of the mountains outside the windows full of fiery color and blazing light after a gray and featureless day.

The colors have faded into charcoal hazy clouds in a dusky sky behind the black tangled silhouettes of the trees. A little patience and Venus will rise and wink through the tangled skeletal limbs with her bright and cheery face.

Betrayal is something we all have to live with as long as we are involved in the human race and not every open hand is ready to cause pain. Sometimes an open hand is attached to a patient and loving person offering nothing more than hope and friendship willing to wait until we turn off the generator and open a way through the fence and the wall.

Light pollution

In winter when there are nothing but clouds hovering over the city, the sky is full of raspberry-tinted light and it glows. I can't see the stars but I can't see them during the day either when the black of space presses closer. The stars and planets, comets and moons are all still there just beyond the light but until the fiery sun sinks below the mountains and the world turns away toward the soft silver glow reflected on the moon's face, I cannot see them. I watch for Venus at dusk before she slips below the sharp mountain peaks and I watch her glide across the sky in the east just before molten brass wells up on the horizon and eclipses her glinting beauty. Venus always faces toward Earth in a circle dance like lovers across a room separated by time and circumstance.

Red-faced warrior Mars dips up and down in the sky, sometimes moving closer, but only in the absence of the warming rays of the sun can I see him and trace his scarred face. The rings of Saturn the big red storm that whirls and boils on Jupiter's surface, the watery, ethereal Neptune and even the quixotic trudge of Uranus stalk and spin, endlessly caught in the sun's magnetic pull, invisible as long as we bask in the sun's glow.

In the city the stars don't seem quite so close. I don't feel like I can reach up and touch them because of street and business and residential lights pushing back the darkness while people huddle close to light and warmth oblivious to the turn and pull of the teeming skies. They choose to view the recorded skies in the background of television shows on nights when the clouds don't reflect the waxing silver light of the sun reflected in the moon's round face on a glowing raspberry-colored night.

On nights like this, I miss the twinkling galactic travelers and the spill of milky stars swirling out of the reach of the life- and light-giving sun.

No fighting here

I called my parents the other night to see how they were doing. Beanie told me a few days ago that Mom is excited about my visit. Dad told me the same thing when I talked to him to see how he was doing. Mom was mopping the floor at the time so Dad and I chatted about his medication and his recent hospital stay. He said he was doing better and that he had just taken his pain pills. Mom finished mopping the kitchen floor (at 9 p.m.) and got on the phone.

"I can't find the Scrabble board."

"Do you still have one?" I asked.

"Yes, but who knows where it could be."

"You could ask Carol or Beanie and see if they have one you could borrow."

"They wouldn't have it. They're not interested but I'll get one and beat you when you get here. You're the only one who gives me a run for my money."

I laughed. "Mom, I'm going to beat the pants off you."

"You'd better eat a few more potatoes first."

"I don't eat pototoes. Too many carbs."

"Better start now. You're going to need them."

"How about we play for a penny a point?" I asked. "That way I can afford the gas to get home and a new car."

"Okay, but you'd better bring your check book. You're going to be paying me."

The conversation went on like this for a few more minutes before she dropped the bomb. "I can't wait for you to get here. I haven't had a good argument in a long time."

"I'm not going to argue with you, Mom."

"You will. You always do."

"Not this time, Mom."

"You're the only one who ever gave me any competition. I'm going to enjoy arguing with you. None of the rest of them argue with me."

"Not going to happen, Mom. You'll have to content yourself with losing at Scrabble."

"Bring that atheist book you told me about. That should give us something to argue about."

I sighed. "Sure, Mom."

"Vir-gin-i-a-," Dad called. "Are you going to leave this mop bucket out all night?"

"I just might. Why don't you take it out if you're so worried about it?"

I said my goodbyes and hung up.

Nope. I'm not going to argue with her no matter what she says, but I will beat the pants off her in Scrabble. I've learned a few words since I left Ohio five years ago. I've also learned how to keep my mouth shut and let the words do the work.

Bragging rights

I received an email from my boss at Author Link that an audio interview will be linked with my review on Ron McLarty's novel, Traveler. The year is getting off to a really good start. The book is good and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a story that is honest and timely and very real. The review should be posted at The Celebrity Cafe later this week and hopefully they will link the audio interview as well. According to my boss at AL, I am becoming their top book reviewer and authors are beginning to ask for me specifically. It has been a long road getting to this point but it has been worth the time and the effort.

On another note, substitution has been on my mind.

A lot of times I don't have the exact ingredients for a recipe or something I'm working on, so I make do with what I have or find another way to finish a given task. I have even discovered that sometimes the substitution makes things better. For instance, I've cut dairy out of my diet and in my butternut squash soup I substituted coconut milk for cream. It lowers the calories of the soup and gives it a creamy and slightly sweet texture so that I don't need to add any sweetener. I also discovered that baking the squash until it caramelizes helps add another level of sweetness that gives the soup a wonderful flavor.

I make do with a lot of substitutions and often end up with something better, but there are some things for which no substitute can be found--or should be found. Sometimes it's necessary to wait for the perfect ingredient no matter how long it takes, holding out instead of settling for less. I can think of at least one instance when that is true and it's worth the wait. Compromise is a good thing at times but there are areas in life when no substitution and no compromise can take the place of the real thing.

There is no substitute or acceptable compromise for love or friendship. There are always people who think they can use something else in their place, but they are wrong. Food, pain, denial, emotional self flagellation, gambling, or shopping are like emotional anesthestics to dull the senses and the need for love and friendship but they are not substitutes. You can't compromise with any of those things and to do so leaves an emptiness that nothing else can fill. It took me a long time to figure that one out. In so many ways, substitution and compromise when it comes to living and feeling and knowing life on a visceral level is like putting life on hold for a nebulous and shadowy promise of paradise and a better tomorrow when each moment of now, of today slips through our hands. You can negotiate a mortgage to buy a home or a car or even furnish your home and clothes yourself and your family, but you cannot negotiate life. That should be lived every single day as if there was no tomorrow.

That is all. Disperse.

One of those days

I was having such a wonderful dream when the phone woke me, or at least it seemed like a dream (The sleeping part, not the phone. I wished that was a dream.). Could have been something else equally cuddly and wonderful, but I digress. The phone rang. Barely clearing the sleep from my eyes and throat, I answered. "Hello?"

"Well, it must be nice to still be asleep on a Sunday morning when the rest of us have to work."

It was Little Peter.

"It was nice until the phone rang," I replied with a smile.

A few moments of conversation, a couple of quick double entendres, a mention of hot bodies and he was off the phone to deal with his Spanish-speaking crew through his interpreter, leaving me awake and my dream shattered. I got up.

Breakfast, a quick check of email, and another four episodes of Angel, the first season, and it was time to get back to work, although I did have some other plans in mind: baking a flourless chocolate cake before the Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate bar in the cabinet could not longer be resisted and I ate it without putting it in the cake. The only problem was that I would also have to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen enough to find the counter top. I knew where the oven was, still stained with soot and smoke from last night's little fire. The 450-degree heating elements in the electric oven set fire to a few drips of grease in the bottom of the oven from the chicken I baked last week. If I have to clean the oven every time I use it, I'm going to have to find another way to bake flourless chocolate cakes and the once every six months paper thin crusted Totino's pizza I buy so it doesn't go up in flames and leave soot and smoke in my nose hairs that I have to sneeze out for 24 hours.

I decided I wasn't ready to do the dishes and opted instead for a few hours of doctors dictating reports. Once I got that out of my system, checked up on the filing status of my state return and futzed around for another 30 minutes or so, I decided to heed the call of the chocolate, got out the ingredients and let the eggs come to room temperature and started the dishes. I got most of the dishes done while I waited for the chocolate to melt in a bowl over a simmering pot of water then separated the eggs and began assembling the chocolate part of the cake. It didn't take long to get things ready for the beaten egg whites and I even managed to get them whipped into soft and glossy peaks by hand. It's my cardio workout and I really should consider baking even more. There was, however, a casualty: the wire whisk. One of the wires came loose from the handle and nearly took out my eye but I still finished beating the egg whites, added the sugar, beat them a little more until they were shiny and then began mixing the chocolate with the egg whites. I poured the mixture into the pan and put it in the oven for 30 minutes while I watched another episode of Angel with half an eye and wrote another book review. The timer went off and I set it on the rack to cool for a while.

Long story short? The cake was chocolaty and light and melt in the mouth good. It was definitely worth giving up the bittersweet Ghirardelli chocolate bar. The dishes are almost all done, even the bowls, utensils and pan I used to bake the cake and I've had a couple pieces of the cake. I definitely want to do it again. I think I can ignore the siren's call of the unmelted chocolate bar long enough to get the cake done. I know I want to dry some of the other low carb desserts from The South Beach Diet Cookbook because everything I have tried so far has been tasty. I could live like this as long as I can have chocolate once in a while.

The rest of the weekend has been full of reading and work and catching up on paperwork, filing my taxes and talking to a friend on the phone for a few hours last night, keeping each other company and getting to know each other better. Little Peter had to work this weekend so his kamikaze strafing of my warm and cuddly dream this morning was a ring by. I'll pay him back later.

Right now the sky is black and I missed watching Venus rise this evening because I was busy eating dinner after I finished the dishes. The Xmas lights are finally gone from the houses across the street and it's finally comfortable here in the apartment after a very cold day. Good thing I like the cold. The ham club newsletter is finished and sent to the printer and the various people for distribution in PDF format and I have one more book review to write and post. I will probably go back to my desk and put in another four hours with the dictating doctors before I take a shower and climb into bed with a good book and the phone close by in case someone calls with more news about Dad.

Tomorrow is another day, a day of work and errands and responsibilities and more books to finish and review. The work never ends, but at least it keeps me out of trouble. Of one thing I'm certain, I'm going to go back to sleep with that warm and cuddly dream from this morning.

That is all. Disperse.

What it takes to be a hero

I finally saw the new Battlestar Galactica and it was really good, a fitting end to the season finale, asking more questions than it answered. Is Gaius Baltar a Cylon? The real question is whether or not Starbuck is a Cylon, but she actually grew up and was a baby and a child and Cylons don't grow up; they wake up in a new adult body. It brings up all kinds of questions, like whether or not the current Battlestar Galactica is a repeat or rewind of history or if history is nothing more than a series of do overs with slightly different story arcs. After all, the original Starbuck was a guy: a cigar smoking, womanizing, comet steering pilot. The new Starbuck is a girl: a cigar smoking, manizing, comet steering pilot. The funny thing about the name, Starbuck, is that it calls to mind a dreamer, a man of tricks and treats who brings rain to parched lands and withered hearts.

I also saw the latest episode of Heroes and the show continues to be a delightful mix of pathos and insight, X-Men without the tights and capes. The show gives a sense of reality to what seems like fantasy but may be closer than we think.

In and around all this new season show watching I have connected with an old friend, made a new friend who could turn out to be more than a friend and heard that my father is back in the hospital, this time with chest pains and rectal bleeding. Beanie called me late last night to tell me Dad was staying in the hospital until they ran some more tests. He was in a lot of pain and the x-rays showed lesions on his bones. Well, that's what cancer is all about and those lesions are eating into his bones and that's why he's in such pain. No surprise there. All I keep thinking is, "What's next?" And I wish that Dad had an adamantium skeleton like Wolverine so the cancer couldn't eat into his bones and cause him so much pain so that he needs Dilaudid and morphine to give him a few moments of relief. In my book, what Dad is going through and how he's handling it makes him a hero, but he's always been my hero.

You never know

This seems to be my lucky week. I have heard from two intimate old friends (No, Mark, we are not having phone sex) and one new fella who just can't seem to understand that he needs to go to the doctor before he loses his hearing and ends up in ICU because he has complications from pneumonia. Hopefully, he finally listened and at least headed in the direction of medical help. I don't understand why most men I know seem to feel the need to ignore their bodies' signals and take care of themselves, but they do. Oh, well. Still, it has been nice to hear from them and know that they still think of me on occasion--even if the occasions are related to sexual thoughts. Shame on you guys. Didn't you know I took MEN off the MENU?

It has been snowing off and on here and there is a lull in the snow and wind right now that I am certain won't last long. It is actually winter in this part of the world and it plans to stay no matter what Phil has to say about it in a couple of weeks. I must remember to wish two very good friends a happy birthday since they will be peeking out of their warrens the same day Phil goes looking for his shadow.

I am nearly finished with the atheist book and it has been an informative and amazing book. I'll post the link to the review when it is ready. I'm ready to begin and end the other review book that I glanced at (okay, I read two chapters) and it looks good as well...if it can sustain the interest from the first couple of chapters.

During another periodic Google search I found some of my work had been purloined and like the letter posted in plain sight without paying me for the privilege. I foresee a few emails with regards to that and coming to terms--monetary terms--as soon as possible. I don't like having my work stolen, especially when someone is making money from my words. Not nice, fellas/ladies. I also found out that I am being prominently mentioned in Wikipedia and in, at last count, 10 different languages. I thought it was only two and I didn't realize I had made the virtual pages of Wikipedia, but I was obviously wrong, and that's only because I don't have the time to keep counting. Nice to know I'm getting some international exposure that will continue with the review of the international best seller I'm about to review.

I am looking forward to Battlestar Galactica starting back up tonight and Heroes resuming the season tomorrow. I'm not certain I'll jump back onto the derailed Lost train, but you never know since I will be in Ohio when it starts and the options are talking with my mother while Dad sleeps the sleep of the weary and radiation drained.

That is all. Disperse.

No pleasing

This month's ham club newsletter has been an exercise is frustration. After being told the newsletter took a first class stamp, I bought the stamps with what money I had, added the stamps from my personal stash gathering dust in my stationery box and sent them out only to have them come back a few days later marked "insufficient postage." Lovely. The treasurer bought 24-cent stamps for all 62 newsletters and finally put them in the mail on Thursday. I got the first response to my message to the club about the newsletter snafu. The guy got his newsletter today and he had "no comments on all space used for C.W." CW stands for Morse code. There was a Federal Communication Commission (FCC) announcement that they have taken the Morse code element out of testing to get the more advanced lessons and it was a very hot issue for the amateur radio community. I wrote about it and one of the other members offered up his take on the issue and the demise of the American Way of Life and Liberty and the Pursuit of fundamental Christianity. I took out the religious diatribe since it has no place in a ham radio newsletter. He didn't complain. One guy who has no comments means he has a lot of comments and none of them are good. The rest of the comments I have heard in person is nothing but kudos for such interesting, timely and thoughtfully neutral coverage of a very sticky subject. How does it go? You can't please all of the people.

Men!

Or at least ham radio MEN!

The rest of my life is humming along smoothly. I have two new books I'm getting paid to review and I'm currently discussing the possibility of being a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Now that would be a major coup. One book is an atheist manifesto that is an international best seller originally written in French and the other a literary novel, a sophomore effort. I'm also almost done with my taxes. I've put in the information from my last paycheck of the year but I have to verify everything from the W-2 from work that I haven't received yet. The sooner I get it the sooner I can file and get this year's taxes over with and move on with the rest of the year.

At least the dreams have been exceptional the past couple of nights and everything looks good, really good, for a change. And it's snowing--or it was snowing a few minutes ago. Time to do laundry, put in some review book time and wrestle with more doctors.

That is all. Disperse.

Travel plans

Ever see an ad and decide to check it out? I did just now.

I wanted to be in Antarctica this year but since Dad was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, I realize that's not an option. I still want to travel and one of the places I've dreamed of visiting since I was 8 years old is Egypt. The ad said round trip to Egypt for $322. I knew it wouldn't be that low, but I still wanted to know.

The only time to travel to Egypt is in the winter here because it's cooler there, too. That's when most of the archaeological digs have taken place and when Amelia Peabody and her family have had their greatest adventures, and where Amelia met and married her husband. I'm not interested in getting married, although I have carried on a long correspondence with a retired officer of the Egyptian army, one of whose sons is a diplomat, and who came to visit me on his way to visit his other son who lives in California. For his age (for any age), he is a well spoken and good looking man who speaks English very well and whose manners are impeccable. He offered to fly me to Egypt to visit him and meet his family but I declined. I prefer to make my own plans and pay my own way, although generous offer was quite intoxicating. I haven't thought of Egypt again until I saw that ad this morning.

Anyway, I discovered it would cost about $800 to fly to Egypt and back for 10 days and the dates in December I would be able to go are open. I might even be able to finagle a discount of sorts if I work it right and I did want to travel this year. India is definitely not an option because of the time I have available and the plane changes, etc., but Egypt is a possibility. I would still want to stay in a hotel and not take my gentleman friend up on his offer of staying with him at his estate or with his family for the same reason I'm driving to Ohio next month--I prefer not to rely on anyone for transportation or accommodations. Never know when I might have to leave early or want to go somewhere not on the official itinerary. Or I might just want to take a drive or meet with a friend or two for a private afternoon.

All this does give me something to think about. It would take about 26 hours to get to Egypt by way of Chicago and London, with layovers in both cities, but it just might be doable.

Egypt. Pyramids. Valley of the Kings. Valley of the Queens. Luxor. Abu Simbel. Cairo. Boat trips down the Nile on a pleasure cruise.

Yes, it is definitely doable.

That is all. Disperse and make your own travel plans.

Silliness in the news

It looks like video games are becoming reality with the new Halo body armor. I don't think the morphine feature of the suit is a good idea and I'm still not quite sure whether the cod piece is for protection or just to show who really is has a bigger dick. However, in a world where the Pentagon is willing to shell out $35,000 for a screwdriver, I think $2000 for the armor is a bargain.

For those people who have a lot of disposable income and no sense of what to do with it, having R2D2 project your DVDs onto your very own home theater is the only way to go and the remote control is the Millennium Falcon. I have to say they looked a lot bigger on the screen in the theater when I saw Star Wars but size is definitely relative here.

Then there's a way to freshen the air outside, especially in smog-laden cities where you can barely see through the murk, with scented tires. Lavender is the first available scent for $119-138 per tire. Orange and jasmine are the next scents to roll off the rubber. As someone who works with essential oils I can tell you that too much jasmine smells like feces. I wonder if the inventors figured that into their equation or of they are saying something else with their new product. Hmmmm.

Over here in the unscented mountain air of Colorado, the sun is making an attempt to warm things up and striking gold from the withered leaves still desperately clinging to a few trees. The sky is a wan Colorado blue but it is empty of clouds of any kind. It won't last long since there is more snow on the way on Saturday. The weather was full of snow and rain and hail when I lived northwest of here at the cabin, more snow and rain and hail than the area had seen in years--six to be exact. The ski slopes were busy and the snow machines were quiet while the avalanches roared occasionally down onto the twisting roads leading into and out of the valley and through the pass. The three chiefs rested beneath a deep cover of packed snow and nearly daily powder.

Every time I came down the mountain to Colorado Springs it was as if this side of the Continental Divide was at least a season behind. No snow lay on the ground and the aspens were still golden and well leafed. After I moved here I danced for a whole three minutes in a sprinkling of rain that barely wet the ground while last July and August rain fell most days and the temperatures were far from the dog days I had come to expect. This winter is just as wet and cold and snowy. The landlady says it's El Nino, but I wonder what the real reason for this sudden change in weather habits is all about. One thing I do know is that I am enjoying the cold and the snow and watching skiers glide down the street and past the window where I spend most of my days.

That is all. Disperse.

Frozen fingers

The landlady complained yesterday that she was tired of the snow and cold. "I'm done," she said. "Time to move on." Then she told me this much snow every weekend and such bitter cold was unusual. I think it's really the snow every weekend that keeps us penned up is the real problem. She's off on the weekends and not being able to enjoy doing anything or going anywhere is cramping her style. We have had snow every weekend for the past four and there's more snow coming this weekend. At least the landlady has finally--after 12 years-- figured out how the heating works in this big old house. I haven't had to use my space heater nearly as much and that means lower electric bills for me. The problem is that the nights are too warm when I like them cold and the days are too cold so that my fingers are frozen when I need to work. Not a good thing. At least I don't have to wear nail polish in a horrible blue because my fingers are already that color.

When I went to the board meeting on Monday night the wind chill was down to 24 below. I don't have any gloves (need to do something about that) and cleaning off the foot of snow with an inch of ice on the bottom from the car was no fun. I made it to the meeting after missing Mike's house again. I stopped at the stop sign at the top of the hill and couldn't get my tires to cooperate on the icy slope. I started rolling back down the hill and nearly rolled all the way back to Mike's house. It took me a while to get turned around on the glassy street, finding just enough snow to give me a little traction, and go back down the hill. I stopped at the store on the way home just to get warm--and food--and toddled on home with a comforting box of White Castle hamburgers, otherwise known as slyders. I needed a bit of the good old days of my childhood to make me feel less cold and keep my fingers warm. Of course there were no onion chips or pickles or that soft greasy slide of the little square burgers down my throat but it was close. And they were hot. For the first time in weeks my fingers weren't frozen.

Go figure. Frozen fingers and all and I made scrambled eggs for breakfast with a side of frozen black cherries.

We don't need no little blue pill

Even though older men lust for young women with that look of their tongues hanging out even when their mouths are still closed, they are not the only ones drawn to the vibrancy of youth. Older women, too, feel the urge but their tongues don't hang out whether their mouths are open or closed. Women tend to be, for the most part, subtler about their urges. There are still a few Flos among us, but not many and they are scattered far and wide.

What most people don't understand is that women reach their sexual peak in their middle years and even more so when the monthly tides have finished pulling their bodies and emotions to and fro. No longer dealing with the possibility of pregnancy and the emotional ups and downs, older women are up for just about anything and it seems older men are too busy chasing after women half their age or even younger to spark their dwindling fires even with the little blue pill. Men reach their sexual peak in the latter teens and early twenties and I'm still not sure why Mother Nature felt the need to design it that way unless it was to make sure she had willing partners with plenty of juice in the tube.

Young women need security and comfort and protection when they are bearing children, not that any of those things have been an issue for a very long time since women got out of the kitchen and from under their families' thumbs and out into the work place to earn their own living to buy their own security and comfort and protection. Society has over turned the proverbial apple cart on that biological situation.

In many older cultures, widows and older women taught juice-filled young men about sex and how to please a woman so that when they were old enough and could afford a wife, or wives, they would know what to do to keep their nubile child bearing charges happy and fulfilled. Nowadays, even though Demi Moore has cornered Ashton Kutcher, society looks on the relationships of older women and younger men with a jaundiced eye while it secretly--and not so secretly--applauds older men and women barely out of their teens. Society, in the guise of pharmaceutical companies, even makes it possible for grandfathers to stand and salute these nubile, child bearing women. That's okay. Older women don't need a little blue pill to keep their juices flowing or their stamina because they were built for the long haul.

It is doubtful Maude would ever marry Harold but when he comes to maturity and is old enough to have the kind of stability and security that attracts a nubile girl of child bearing years looking for a safe and comfortable nest he will know what to do to please her and keep her interested in more than his financial stability once the little blue pill kicks in. He can thank Maude for that.

The little blue pill

In most of the books I've read over the past few weeks there is a recurring theme: older men falling for much younger women. Viagra has been just one of the reasons for this belief that an older man would be attractive to younger women, but it is Stephen King's reasoning in Bag of Bones that I find most interesting, especially contrasted with a recent article about men's preferences, and not just for younger women.

King, in the character of Mike Noonan, best selling author hiding a career ending case of writer's block, writes that younger women want older men because they are more stable and secure: financially and emotionally. Men of middle age have found themselves and are established in a profession. They have lived. Conversely, men are drawn to younger women not only because of the biological urge for procreation but also to women who are unstable because men see adventure and excitement, the very things they feel they have lost by becoming financially and emotionally stable and secure in their professions.

It reminds me of something I heard once. Men marry women expecting them not to change and women marry men expecting to be able to change them. It is the dichotomy of the species that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus attempted to explain.

It never occurs to men that the damsel in distress they find so appealing is probably going to spend the rest of her life running from one chaotic situation to another, upsetting his stable world and draining his finances if she sticks around for any length of time or that he is willingly taking on Sisyphus's task of eternally rolling the ball uphill only to have it crash to the bottom so that he must start all over. He doesn't see the jagged murderous rocks as he is lured to destruction by the siren's call.

Then I am reminded of Samantha Jones from Sex and the City who was successfully (for a time) lured to the stark reality of an 80-year-old billionaire's bed by the glittering promises of diamonds and Viagra only to run screaming from the sight of his wrinkled and sunken behind as he stopped in the midst of foreplay to relieve himself. Samantha got out of Dodge very quickly and the security and stability she saw in the aging Romeo with a pocket full of little blue pills.

Even Philip Roth in The Human Stain contrasts a writer who survived prostate cancer intact without his libido, something he felt he had easily and painlessly left behind, with a 71-year-old retired dean of a college having an illicit affair with an illiterate and battered woman whose Vietnam veteran husband stalks them and blames her for the deaths of their two children. The writer is drawn into Silk's life as a moth drawn to a flame just as surely as the stable and secure retired dean is drawn to Faunia, the beast of his youthful libido awakened by a pocket full of little blue pills.

I wonder if it is the chemical miracle of those little blue pills that has writers dwelling on the these May-December romances or the fact that the writers themselves are looking into the beast's sleeping face and daring to waken him while they stand looking after the damsels in distress with their tongues hanging out even when their mouths are closed. Or is this the libidinous version of King Midas's lust for gold that was nearly his undoing? Only time will tell as more and more authors look into their winter years and rage against the dying of that lustful light, reaching into their pockets and their dreams for one of those little blue pills.